County Rankings / Massachusetts
The Best Golf Courses in Plymouth County, Massachusetts
Plymouth County is where Massachusetts golf splits in two. Along the South Shore and down toward Plymouth itself sit private clubs of genuine national standing, built by the best architects working today and by Donald Ross a century ago. On the same map, sometimes in the same town, sit public courses routed through cranberry bogs and municipal layouts owned by the town. Seventeen courses make the county bench. The top of this list can stand with any county in New England. The bottom is honest local golf, and we will say so when we get there. The state frame is in our Massachusetts state ranking.
1Old Sandwich Golf Club
The best course in the county, and the clearest argument for Plymouth as a golf destination for people who will mostly never play it. Old Sandwich opened in 2004 in Plymouth, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and named for Old Sandwich Road. It plays 6,908 yards at par 71, and its architects aimed for a course of traditional character that rewards thoughtful and skillful play, which is Coore and Crenshaw language for golf where the ground and the angles matter more than the forced carry. Golf Digest has ranked it No. 3 in Massachusetts and No. 73 in its 100 Greatest. Private, on the western shore side of Cape Cod Bay, and the standard every other modern course in the county is measured against.
2Boston Golf Club
Gil Hanse in Hingham, opened in 2005 at 19 Old County Road, designed for the passionate golfer who appreciates a classic experience honoring the game's traditions, per the club. Boston Golf Club was the only modern course among the five private courses that gave Massachusetts its strong Golfweek private ranking, it has tied for 32nd on Golfweek's best modern courses list in state reports, and compiled lists put it at No. 84 in Golf Digest's Top 100. Two top-100 modern courses in one county, one by Coore and Crenshaw and one by Hanse, is a density most counties in America cannot match. Hanse takes second here because Old Sandwich's rankings and reputation run a step ahead, not because Boston Golf Club lacks anything a modern architecture reader could want.
3The Kittansett Club
Kittansett takes third on standing rather than on detail we can print here. It is a private club with a national reputation among architecture readers, coastal in character, and the name every Massachusetts golfer knows belongs in this tier of the list. We place it behind the two modern top-100 courses on the evidence in hand and ahead of the rest of the county on the strength of that reputation, honestly labeled as such. If any course in this ranking is under-documented in our records relative to its fame, it is this one.
4Plymouth Country Club
The county's Golden Age entry, and a genuine Ross story. The club was organized in April 1910, and its first nine included three holes on the ocean side of Warren Avenue, abandoned in 1913 for lack of play. Donald Ross designed the second nine, opened July 21, 1921, and returned to build a third nine in 1929, acting as on-site contractor, making 27 holes before the Depression undid the expansion; members later leased the original nine to the pro, Donald Vinton, and it went bankrupt in 1932. What survives is a private 18 on 200 acres with views of Plymouth Bay. A Ross who not only drew the plans but built the course himself, twice, gives Plymouth Country Club a depth of authorship few Ross clubs can claim.
5Black Rock Country Club
Brian Silva's Hingham design from 2003, built around a quarry in the club's telling, is the third modern private course in the county's top five. Silva is New England's own modern architect, and a quarry site gives a designer elevation and drama that South Shore ground rarely offers. Private, serious, and a step below the Hanse and Coore and Crenshaw work in national recognition, which is the only reason it sits fifth rather than higher.
6Pinehills Golf Club Nicklaus Course
The best public golf in the county starts here. The Nicklaus Course at Pinehills in Plymouth, opened in 2002, is the second of two 18s at the facility and carries more elevation than its sibling in local telling. Both Pinehills courses appear in Golfweek's Massachusetts public lists, and between them they give Plymouth a public offering that can fill a full golf trip without repeating a hole.
7Pinehills Golf Club Jones Course
Rees Jones designed the Jones Course, opened in 2001, a championship-style public layout inside the Pinehills residential community. It ranks a hair behind the Nicklaus here on local reputation and variety, and some golfers will flip the order; the honest gap between the two Pinehills courses is small, and playing both across two days is the correct Plymouth public itinerary.
8CrossWinds Golf Club
A 27-hole public facility in Plymouth from Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, opened in 1997, offering championship and executive golf under one roof. Twenty-seven holes is a real asset for groups and for locals who want variety without driving, and Hurdzan and Fry are serious designers. It sits below Pinehills on conditioning of reputation, and comfortably above the rest of the public bench.
9Marshfield Country Club
A private Wayne Stiles club from 1922, parkland by the North River in local telling. Stiles is the quiet name on this list, a New England architect whose work rewards study, and Marshfield's century of private golf earns the top spot in the ranking's middle band.
10South Shore Country Club
Stiles again, municipally: a 1922 course in Hingham owned by the town, public South Shore golf with a Golden Age lineage. A municipal course with a real architect's name attached, bookable by anyone, is exactly the kind of course county rankings should surface rather than bury.
The rest, briefly and honestly. Hatherly Country Club, a private club dating to 1895 in North Scituate with coastal holes near the Atlantic in local telling, and Atlantic Country Club, a semi-private Mark Mungeam course from 1991 in Plymouth offering public tee times, lead the remaining group. Southers Marsh, built through a working cranberry bog in Plymouth in 2001, is the most distinctive of the rest, its bog holes a signature no other course here can copy. Scituate Country Club is a nine-hole semi-private club from 1920, short coastal golf. Waverly Oaks and Widow's Walk round out the seventeen as further public options in a county that is not short of them. Squirrel Run, an executive-length public course in Plymouth from 1992, closes the list; ordinary golf, honestly labeled, in cranberry bog country.
The concession this ranking owes: the very top of Plymouth County is private, and a visiting golfer's Plymouth is Pinehills, CrossWinds, and Southers Marsh rather than Old Sandwich and Boston Golf Club. We rank the golf first because that is our job, and we note the access because that is also our job. A county where the public golfer eats well and the architecture reader dreams bigger, sometimes on the same street in Plymouth, is a county worth the drive down Route 3. Start with the bogs and the two Pinehills courses. Dream about the Ross-built, Hanse-shaped top of the list on the drive home, the way everyone else in Massachusetts does.